Update Lock File Without Installing | Generated by AI

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The --package-lock-only flag in npm install tells npm to only update the package-lock.json file without actually installing any packages in your node_modules folder.

This is useful when you want to:

  1. Update the lock file after manually editing package.json - you can regenerate package-lock.json to reflect your changes without downloading anything

  2. Resolve lock file conflicts - if you’re merging branches and have conflicts in package-lock.json, you can run npm install --package-lock-only to regenerate it based on your current package.json

  3. Check what versions would be installed - you can see what the resolved dependency tree would look like without actually installing packages

  4. Save time in CI/CD pipelines - if you only need to update the lock file for a commit, you don’t waste time downloading packages

For example:

npm install --package-lock-only

This contrasts with --dry-run (which shows what would be installed but doesn’t modify anything) and the normal npm install (which both updates the lock file and installs packages).

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